The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories by Ltd Penguin Books

Author:Ltd, Penguin Books
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141395630
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-05-09T16:00:00+00:00

Genji Keita

Mr English

Translated by Jay Rubin

1

The day after it happened, word spread through the company that ‘Mr English’, Mogi Soichirō, and the Assistant Director’s assistant Oda Yoshirō, had slugged it out at the conclusion of a heated argument in the bar Heiroku.

‘So they finally did it!’ somebody shouted with a loud clap.

But Mogi was fifty-seven, Oda fifty-two. At the very least, this was no way for mature men to behave. Everybody found the whole thing ridiculous, especially when they heard that Mogi not only had to be rushed to a nearby hospital with blood gushing from his wound, but that he also went home with layer upon layer of white bandaging around his head. Nobody needed a witness to tell them who was at fault: it had to be Mogi.

Mogi was a temporary employee, as he had been ever since joining the company twenty years earlier. This seemed to be the chief source of pain in his life, but he had at least stopped complaining about it in recent years because a company rule gave temp status even to regular employees who stayed on past the mandatory retirement age of fifty-five. It would be hasty to conclude, however, that just because he was no longer grumbling, Mogi had managed to sweep away the deep-seated dissatisfaction he felt towards the company for having kept him on temporary status up until the age of fifty-five. Not only was the difference like night and day between regular and temporary staff with regard to both bonus size and severance pay, but each day Mogi reported to work, he had to press his seal in the attendance register below the name of even the most recently hired office girl.

‘Humph! What do they take me for?’ Mogi would mutter each morning when he pressed his seal in the register, after which he would make a point of tossing the book to the far end of the table. It turned his stomach to see the untroubled faces of those youngsters fresh from college who glided into the top ranks of the registry, contemptuous of his twenty years of hard work. He had to find a way to amaze each one with a show of his outstanding abilities.

‘Hey, young fella, they tell me you’re a college graduate,’ he would accost a newcomer – usually in the company lounge.

‘Yes, I am,’ the young man would reply with a proud swelling of the chest, though of course all the other newcomers were college graduates, too.

‘Then your English is probably pretty good. No, excuse me, it must be good. So let me ask you a question.’

At this point the typical newcomer would fasten a suspicious gaze on the short, scrawny – and obviously nasty – old Mogi, who, despite his advanced age, did not appear to be either a department manager or a general manager, much less a company director.

‘How do you say “Keigun no ikkaku” in English?’

‘Huh? That sounds more like Chinese than Japanese. What’s “keigun”?’

‘A flock of chickens.’

‘And “ikkaku”?’

‘A crane, of course.

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